NationThailand-Nov 26
Business leaders urge Thailand to implement laws on data sovereignty to support the growing demand for AI and data centres, while managing energy challenges. Smith Banomyong, Executive Officer at Gulf Development Public Company Limited, spoke at the Smart City 2026 seminar on “Thailand’s Goal to Become a Data Centre & Cloud Service Hub in the Region”, highlighting a shift in Thailand’s data center landscape. He explained that data centers are increasingly being concentrated in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), rather than near Bangkok as seen in earlier stages. This shift is driven by the “explosive growth” in demand for data centers, with the largest data center in Thailand just two years ago having a capacity of 8-10 MW, while today new clients are requesting hundreds of MWs. This growth reflects the changing role of data centers, from simply storing data for backup purposes (such as for banks and companies) to processing large amounts of data, especially for AI. Data centers now require significantly more computing power than before. Smith cited Singapore’s 1,000 MW data centre as a benchmark, while Thailand’s largest center only has 60 MW. Despite Singapore being a small country with limited clean energy, it has become a data center hub, partly due to data sovereignty laws that require data to be stored within the country. To support the growth of Thailand’s data infrastructure, Smith stressed the need for data sovereignty laws, asserting that Thailand must develop legal frameworks to require sensitive data to be stored within the country for security and economic reasons. Current definitions of national security data are too narrow, typically only considering military data, whereas countries like South Korea and Singapore have much broader definitions, encompassing government and citizen data. Read more at:
